It’s Alyysa’s Birthday! and as always, it feels good to be surrounded by true friends! This is to immortalize the gorgeous looks of this fine ladies, who blossoms beautifully over the years!

This is the story of their friendship.

Friends Etymology in different languages.

Friend (English) – Old English – freond, “to love, to favor,” from Pre-Germanic. *frijojanan “to love”. Related to Old English freo “free.”

Freundin (German) – Old English: freond, to love – In turn, “freond” comes from “fri”, which is Germanic for “to like, to love”, and which is also connected with the Norse goddess Frigg, the goddess of love.

Vriend (Dutch & Afrikaans) – Old English: freond, to love – In turn, “freond” comes from “fri”, which is Germanic for “to like, to love”, and which is also connected with the Norse goddess Frigg, the goddess of love.

Sahib (صاحب) (Arabic) – respectful address to Europeans in India, 1673, from Hindi or Urdu sahib “master, lord,” from Arabic, originally “friend, companion,” from sahiba “he accompanied.” OR – the word for “friend” comes from the root “truth,” because “Who is your friend? The one who tells you the truth.”

Péngyǒu (朋友) (Mandarin) – In Shang-Yin (XVI – XI BC) oracle bone inscriptions the character “you” (later – “friend”) designated one of types of sacred communication between men and divine ancestors. It implied provision of offerings from the part of descendants and a grant of support from the ancestors’ part in exchange. The character “peng” (later – a part of word combination “pengyou” – “friend”) was used as the measure word for “bunches of cowries” being an important component of ritual gift exchange in Early China. The character “bin” (later – “guest”) in Shang-Yin time designated special sacred ceremony of entertainment of royal ancestors. In Western Zhou (XI – VIII BC) period it used to designate a type of exchange between men of the same social status, and, on the other hand, a type of tribute delivered by dependent tribes or political units. It also comprised the graph “cowry”. Thus this symbol of ritual exchange link the concepts of “friendship” and “hospitality” to each other, making us suppose that gifts used to play an important role in such kind of relationship.

Tomodachi (Japanese) – Tomodachi is the Japanse word for friend. Tomodachi is written with two kanji: 友 (tomo, friend) and 達(-tachi, attain). The first kanji comes from the Chinese you and represents two hands (又 right and 左 left) working together. The second kanji comes from the Chinese da and isn’t relevant to the etymology (it’s phonetic, “a word about moving that sounds like da” = attain). The Japanse word itself then stems from the idea that working together to accomplish a task creates friends. For the Japanese this will generally be true, as the members of your ka sei (課制, company work group) are often the people you socialize with the most. A familiar abbreviation of the term, just tomo, translates closer to “buddy” or “pal” (私の友).

Kaibigan (Tagalog) – the root word “ibig”, meaning “to love.” Putting “ka” before a rootword signifies a state of being, such as “kasama” (ka + sama “to go with”), literally “being someone to go with” or “companion”. Putting “an” or “han” after a word makes the focus of the sentence the direction of the action, such as “simba” (to worship) + “han” becomes “simbahan”, a church, literally, “a place to worship”. Thus, “kaibigan” could literally mean, “the state of being someone to share love with”!